U2 'Invisible' by Mark Romanek
David Knight - 12th Feb 2014
With the new U2 song Invisible being available for free on Sunday February 2nd to benefit [RED] – and receiving over 3 million downloads globally raising more than $3 million in donations from Bank of America – a 60 second clip of the video appeared in an ad break during Sunday's Superbowl.
Now the video has been released in full today. Directed by Mark Romanek, it's a performance video but it's also technically groundbreaking, thanks to the ingenuity of British creative studio Marshmallow Laser Feast (or MLF), who designed a real-time visual system that captured and analysed U2’s movements as they performed on a stage, allowing the band to generate visuals interactively on a giant LED screen behind them.
MLF - Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas, Barney Steel – worked with Juliette Larthe and Mark Logue of PRETTYBIRD to realise their concept, which was to create an interactive 3D lighting and video architecture that directly translated the band and audience’s movement into striking video and lighting output. Then the video was directed by Mark Romanek - utilising world class LD Patrick Dierson – and shot over three days in a hangar in Santa Monica with 1,000 extras.
“Cameras track the movement of the band and audience and feed that information into the Punkalator, an application developed specifically for this project by MLF,” explains MLF director Robin McNicholas. “This then interfaces with a Green Hippo Media Server and works in sync with Protools and a GrandMA lighting console.”
Featured sponsors
David Knight - 12th Feb 2014
Credits
Production/Creative
- Director
- Mark Romanek
- Producer
- Aris MacGarry
- Producer
- Juliette Larthe
- Production Company
- AC
- Production Company
- P
- 1st AD
- David Dean
Camera
- Director of Photography
- Philippe Le Sourd
Lighting/Grip
- Gaffer
- Bill Silic
- Grip
- Johnny London, Jr.
Misc
- Concept
- Marshmallow Laser Feast
- Lighting
- Marshmallow Laser Feast
Other credits
STAGING & EQUIPMENT & TECHNICAL SUPPLY
ARE Production
Producer
Antony Randall
LIGHTING & INTERACTIVE CONCEPT & LIVE/REAL TIME DESIGN
Marshmallow Laser Feast AKA Barney Steel, Memo Akten, Robin McNicholas
Producer & Exec Producer
Juliette Larthe
Exec Producer
Derek Richmond
Head of Production
Margo Mars
Line Producer
Mark Logue
Production Assistant
Ciara Mc Gowan
Production Co-ordinator
Lana Salfiti:
Software Developer
Marek Bereza
Animator
James Francis
Animator
James Medcraft
PRETTYBIRDUK:
Animator
Ersin Han Ersin
Animator
Chris Thompson
Animator
Cai Mathews
Content Editor
Mike Harrison
Pre-Vis Artist
Young Eun Kim
Media Server Consultant
John Montague
Lighting Consultant
Jonny Milmer
MA programming WYSIWYG
Adam Power
MA programmer
Patrick Dierson
Media server programmer
Loren Barton
Editor
Geoff Hounsell
Editing Company
Arcade Edit
POST-PRODUCTION:
David Knight - 12th Feb 2014